The Plague (PAL) - 100% cracked, one-disk (Halloween release)

[ross]

Hi kids, a little treat for you!

Flasht-ross present the full working, full screen, one-disk ADF edition of "The Plague":



This version is the PAL only edition and contains a nice trainer.



Features:
- it works in any Amiga with 512KB ram (OCS+ PAL or ECS+ NTSC, any processor);
- one-disk, fast loading (double the original), all features and hiddens maintained;
- it contains all saving features of the original (high score and 'panel' image);
- the game is very hard, so it includes a complete trainer (and a cute cracktro ).



All was born in this thread: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=58890
Ans also, a preview in this thread: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=116057

Thanks to the inspirers and beta testers!

Final words.
Yes, this is the long awaited cracked ADF release, which after various attempts has finally come to light.
It was a great journey, who tried to do it will certainly realize it (of course if you like this stuff ).
For anyone who wants to try their hand at Amiga ADFs crack-making this is certainly an excellent training ground, especially due to the difficulties associated with memory usage.
I think I used everything, up to the last byte of the 512KB available (and used a lot of tricks..).
Furthermore, apart from the protections indicated in the old threads, it contains a possibly never noticed and sneaky one (yes, glitches are not random) .


Look for this game release into the Zone!

To all old farts on EAB, have a Happy Halloween!

[TCD]

Ah, sweet Thank you for the all-inclusive goodness release

[grafpatrick]

Wooooow! Thank you sooooo much!!!!

Patrick

[girv]

Nice work!

[Galahad/FLT]

Nice work, holy hell you really were up against it trying to fit that damned loader in LOL.

You must have had to playtest the hell out of the game to find that as the location!!!

Calls with LINEA's to really low mem, presumably to disturb the code in those different sections as little as possible.

What was the cause of the glitches experienced in the first level before?

[DanyPPC]

Many thanks

[ross]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Nice work, holy hell you really were up against it trying to fit that damned loader in LOL.

You must have had to playtest the hell out of the game to find that as the location!!!

Yeah, and these locations are even protected, with infamous code that hidden corrupts your code..

Calls with LINEA's to really low mem, presumably to disturb the code in those different sections as little as possible.

Right, the loader is basically a core call from the entire game (there is an extra routine which 'remaps' it where possible).
Furthermore this allowed me to act better than the original game, note the level 4 which does not reload in the case of game over!

[the vector page stunts I've done are a lot of fun ]

What was the cause of the glitches experienced in the first level before?

A sneacky and very hidden protection.
I'll leave you the thrill of finding it, I'll just tell you that it's in an IRQ and (ab)uses the blitter.

[malko]

Thank you flasht-ross ! (this is a unexpected but excellent name for sure )

Again a great crack & release

And an Happy Halloween to both of you as well.

[dreamkatcha]

Cheers! Who'd have thought this would be the game to have such viable protection lavished upon it. Did you manage to identify who was responsible?

[rygar]

ross, great work. thank you

[ross]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

Did you manage to identify who was responsible?

I have no idea, but the way it's integrated into the code it looks like something the lead programmer of the game inserted.

Basically it is very simple and therefore very easy to confuse as part of the game code (to disable its functions I simply changed a bit ), but it is its 'lightness' that makes it lethal.
Virtually no one thinks that video glitches could be a form of protection, especially if sporadic as in this case, but you always think of your own mistake in cracking the code.

Only by investigating more in depth how it is 'enabled' will you understand perfectly that it is a precise choice and with 'camouflaged' activation (of course there is a code check at the base, but the 'development' is original and requires good knowledge of the Amiga system).

However, even the 'strange' track 42 is not an everyday thing, so you realize that you are dealing with someone who knows how Amiga metal works.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by ross

However, even the 'strange' track 42 is not an everyday thing, so you realize that you are dealing with someone who knows how Amiga metal works.

Just got some extra info on Mastodon from Metin Seven today that might explain it:

I knew the creators of The Plague personally. They were also members of The Jungle Command, a famous Dutch demo scene group.

[ross]

Ah! Just noticed the release on the Flashtro site: https://flashtro.com/flasht-ross-the-plague/ (thanks mus@shi9, I thought you were on holiday ).

If you check the crc of the file it's not the same.
The two versions are perfectly identical, but the one you find in The Zone is the very latest, which contains a small patch to make it work also on ECS+ NTSC machines.
For some reason (a series of events ) the file is the previous one, but I think it will be fixed soon.

Greets to the Flashtro team!

[Galahad/FLT]

So was the version Classic cracked different in regards this level of protection?

[tomcat666]

Very nice Will there be a whdload version too ?

[Retroplay]

That's already been taken care of
https://www.whdload.de/games/Plague.html

[ross]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

So was the version Classic cracked different in regards this level of protection?

No idea, I haven't checked the Classic's crack and not even if the non-PAL version contains this protection.
Out of curiosity I'll check later.

Originally Posted by tomcat666

Very nice Will there be a whdload version too ?

Well, I don't know how useful it can be, the WHDLoad patch works differently (and doesn't trigger the protection(s), so it doesn't need those cracks).

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Retroplay

That's already been taken care of
https://www.whdload.de/games/Plague.html

Are you sure the full screen pal version is supported? All i tried are the ones with huge black borders... unlike the new flash adf version.

[ross]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

So was the version Classic cracked different in regards this level of protection?

Checked.
They had found it too (in a different position and with a different value, but the concept was the same).

I first searched the memory for the register used and, not finding it, I initially thought that the protection was not there.
Then I searched in the IRQ code, just as in the PAL version, and at a certain point I found a series of nops..

They used a different solution than mine.
I let the code do all the memory checks it wanted and then I didn't make it 'activate' the glitches (no nops..)
Instead, they pretended that the value to be checked was always correct and skipped the setup.

[Superman]

Excellent work Ross! Looks like it was a lot of hard work but you really did it! Nice cracktro too as a bonus.